


Every Breath You Take

by AnneMcSommers



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-22 14:07:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneMcSommers/pseuds/AnneMcSommers
Summary: Klaus spent his entire life being watched by ghosts, even when he was so high he couldn't see them.  This Klaus's life and his relationship with the one ghost that was always there.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	Every Breath You Take

**Author's Note:**

> The summary for this sucks, I know. If you have any better suggestions after reading this, please send them along. Also any tagging recommendations. I am drawing a blank.

She was always there. The woman in white. Well mostly white, there was blood seeping into the bottom of her nightgown. He never asked her how she died. Not that he hadn't talked to her. That rule came later, the never speaking to the dead.

She, she was different. She spoke English with a heavy German accent that sometimes made her hard to understand, she told him her name was Anja. She used to tell him about her life, her childhood. But mostly she spoke of her son. Not like the other ghosts screaming and demanding, but with a quiet desperation that made her harder to ignore than all the others that came later. She said she named him Nikolaus for her father whom she loved more than anything, but had died young when she herself was just a girl. Klaus to his friends, Nikki to her mother. She told him she loved Nikolaus the moment she saw him, but she mourned the life he would have. She had no husband and she already could barely afford to feed herself, but she knew in that moment she would never give him up. She told him Nikolaus was taken from her minutes after his birth by her brother, and she never saw him again. 

She never spoke of a time after that, and with the blood he had always assumed that she had died then and there. It was common for ghosts to fixate on the events surrounding their deaths. It also explained why she was so fixated on him, she called him meine liebling (my darling). It was what she called her Nikolaus, and he had always thought seeing him must have reminded her of the child she had lost.

She taught him all kinds of things over the years. When nanny had gotten frustrated at his slowness to learn she patiently explained over and over how to button a button, or how to tie his shoes. He was never first to learn anything, and it made his nanny furious. Looking back on the smug looks of the other nanny’s he wondered if it was just pride or if that had been an incentive not only for them but for the women caring for them to be first. 

When he was five, she started to teach him to speak German. He soaked it up like a sponge, like he did everything else she taught him. She was the one person in his life that seemed to be happy with him no matter how poorly he was doing. He wanted to make her proud the way his brother made his father proud. It seemed though that learning German from her was the biggest mistake of his life. Before then his father always thought the people he made up were imaginary, that he was as ordinary as his sister. But his six-year-old son carrying on entire conversations in a language that no one else in the house spoke was enough to make the most sceptical believers, and unfortunately that included his Father who now knew he was not ordinary.

That’s when the testing started. It started with little questions, what do they look like, what is there name. He never mentioned Anja, he was afraid his father would make her leave and not come back. He was too young then to realize that his people were dead, and that his father had no control over their comings and goings.

Once his Father realized that he was talking to the dead it got worse. Can you summon them? Can you control them? Make them tell you their secrets? His Father thought he should be able to do all three. It was even speculated that he himself had the ability to bring back the dead, or that he would once his power advanced. He could only do one of those things, summon. The secrets weren’t hard to fake, the dead didn't really have them the way the living did. It was like all the earthly filters had melted away with their lives. Control though was where he faltered, he couldn’t make the dead do as he wished, and what was worse he couldn't make them leave. 

He sat listening to the voices of the ghosts he summoned scream endlessly at nothing for hours, as he cowered from the noise ears covered. His Father took this as a weakness. A fear that must be overcome by exposure, and thus started his time in the mausoleum. There he did learn to fear his gifts, not only the noise the brought. Voices screaming wordlessly with emotion that could not be articulated by those so long dead they forgot what it was to speak. All they knew is that they needed to be heard, and he was the only one who could hear them. Anja wasn’t there in the mausoleum, she said she couldn't go. She was there when he came back, singing him lullabies. He could almost feel her hand in his hair and she stroked it over his head.

The mausoleum was his night time testing. He went there once a week for as long as his father deemed necessary. It was almost worse than the daytime testing that came later. It took some years, but father had determined that most of them had what he called secondary powers, something else that they could do. Super strong and super resilient, super accurate aim and ability to breathe under water, ability to travel through space and ability to travel through time, ability to make people do what they want and change who people are, ability to summon a tentacle monster…well there were exceptions to every rule.

He thought the ability to see/speak to the dead and summon them counted, but father disagreed. After all, breathing underwater isn’t related to aim, so maybe it might not be related at all. Father had decided that with the exception of the mausoleum his daytime individual training would be focused not on the dead, but on discovering his other abilities. At first he was overjoyed at the idea of an ability not related to the dead, maybe his father would find this new ability more important. Maybe the mausoleum would stop the way his brother’s time in the tank had stopped when aim was deemed more practical.

Then the testing started, which is why he could say with 100% certainty he was not fireproof, not if the third-degree burns had anything to say about it. He also couldn’t fly, hold his breathe under water, he wasn't resistant to cold, heat, acid… That and 1000 other tests later and some fairly significant time in the infirmary he was back in the mausoleum this time with enough water to last him the three long days before he was let out.

He couldn't hear at first when he was let out. The voices of the dead had screamed until his ears just couldn't hear anything less. And what was worse some of them followed him back, left the mausoleum in a way he now would never be able to. The woman was there, and even though he couldn't hear her lullabies the deep chill of the mausoleum was chased away by the warmth he felt at her presence.

He talked to her less by then, mostly not at all. She understood though, saw the way he flinched from the others and never pressed herself on him like they did. It’s why he talked to her at all, about girls, about boys, about nail polish, and dresses. She never judged him, not even when he stole his mother heels and went for a walk she just smiled indulgently. He wished she were real, no not real, alive.

His father was not so indulgent and the blow he took for wearing those heels knocked him off balance and down an entire flight of stairs. He broke his jaw, and everything changed. She was gone. The woman, Anja, was gone when he woke up, and for the first time he could remember he was alone. They were all gone. He felt wonderful. He slept better than he had his entire life, and even though his jaw was wired shut it was okay if he couldn't speak because it was blessedly silent. Then the medication wore off, and she was the first one he saw. He screamed and railed, and was so worked up that the wire cutters that were sitting on his bedside table had to be used to let him throw up what little liquid he had in his stomach. The pain was intense, but worth it when his mother gave him the shot that made the ghosts fade out again with the pain.

The drugs made the ghosts go away. It started with the pain killers. Not all the time, just a little here and a little there, when they got really bad, when he really needed sleep. When he was off them, she looked disappointed, but she never judged, just sat with him, mostly silent, listening to him with a focus no one else ever showed for his endless rambling.

Then Five disappeared and while Anja tried to comfort him there was nothing that she could say that could make this better. After that he was on the pills more than he was off of them and this was the time his mother chose to give them names for their birthday. She said she would meet with each of them, by number and give them a name. A list of names actually with the one she had chosen and some alternatives if they weren’t happy with the first option.

He sat silently waiting for his turn as his siblings went in and came out 1, 2, 3 no longer their only identities and then it was his turn. He looked down at the list as his mother explained she had chosen the names from his year and country of birth. Her choice was Alexander, meaning defender of the people. He looked down at the list: Alexander, Stefan, Tomas, Max and Jakob. Perhaps he had been a number too long, because none of these felt like his name and tears welled up his eyes.

His mother frowned at him, and he explained why he was so sad. She pulled him close and he felt the awkward stiffness in her arms as she pulled him into one of her hugs. She told him that is was okay, and that there was no rush to name him now, that he should think about it, and if there was a name he wanted and that she approved that they would use that instead. He looked up and realized the pills must be wearing off because he could see Anja standing in the corner looked at him mournfully. He met her eye and he knew what he wanted to be named. 

It got worse with a name, it was like the number confused them because they screamed his name not only when he was awake, but in his dreams over and over again. He got caught taking medication from the infirmary and in an instant his supply line was dried up. He tried staying clean for a while, with Anja’s encouragement, but eventually the voices became too loud. He ended up sneaking out and using what little money he had to buy some pot from a guy down near Griddy’s, from there everything spiraled. 

Everyone knew what was happening, but no one wanted to say anything, so focused on their own little world, own problems. When he was sixteen his father stopped sending him to the mausoleum, stopped testing him, stopped sending him on missions. He was strangely let down by that, Father giving up on him, but he said nothing lest he spend a week in the mausoleum again.

For a while he just drifted like that, and then his brother died. Died on a mission that he should have been on, would have been on if it weren’t for the drugs. So he dried out, and when he saw his brother standing there bloodied by his bedside it was another month before he allowed himself to come down again. That was when he got kicked out of the academy, most of the others had already left but he stayed free room and board was just to good to pass up. Apparently their father had had enough of his shenanigans as he called them, he was either to be sober and part of the academy or no part of it at all. 

The streets were rough, when he was sober, usually due to an involuntary visit to rehab, he focused on his brother, who over time became less terrifying to look at, and eventually didn't leave except for the most drug filled nights. It wasn’t often when he saw Anja, but when he did he pretended he didn't. He didn't want to see her worried expression, more importantly he didn't want to see how disappointed she must be in him. Eventually he forgot about her all together.

When his father died and he walked through those front gates he wished he wasn’t alone. It nagged at him, the memory of not being alone, but then he pawned dad’s stupid box and took enough oxy to kill a small elephant and poof, nagging feeling gone. Then Five was back, and the world was ending, and Dave, god Dave, and he was there, getting sober, 3 days before the end of the world. He died and came back, and part of him wondered if this was the first time, all those impossible recoveries from ODs over the years, but he pushed it to the back of his mind because for once he was important, he knew something important. It hurt that it took Pogo for them to believe him, but with his reputation he wouldn’t either.

He redirected his hurt and focused everything on his dead brother, getting Swayzied and trying to ignore his Father’s voice in his head telling him about his potential. After that it was a blur the Academy coming down, the bowling alley, the concert, him and his powers and then the time travel.

It was months of work laying low in the past and then coming forward and then there was the reunion cause whatever they changed back then changed everything because his brother was standing there alive and he wept. 

The days that followed were quiet by comparison, they moved on, the whole family making lives from themselves, here in the academy. It was like they were reborn in the end of the world, and came back people rather than the screwed-up hero experiment their Father had raised them to be. 

He didn’t get a job, or get a guy, instead focused on his powers and his new found ability to both summon and banish ghosts. His goal was to summon Dave, to have, to say goodbye, he didn’t really know to what end yet. In the meantime, he was starting smaller helping the ghosts nearby move on, or those who wouldn’t move on, leave and never come back. 

He was summoning ghosts to practice on when he surprised himself by summoning a familiar ghost, Anja. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen here, before Ben died, and he hadn’t thought of her in almost as long, and there she was staring at him just the way he remembered her. She looked proud, and his heart ached. He wondered if she had been there all along, and there was something in her face that made him think that while he couldn’t see her all those years, she had never really left him.

Then he did something he never thought he would do for anyone but Dave and he made her solid. She stepped forward looking shocked as she bumped into a table, but the smile she gave him was likely sunshine filling him with warmth. She came towards him faster now, and drew hum into a hug. It was soft and warm, and everything he had always wished for as a child, ever thing he had imagined it would be and he could feel her tears on his neck as she whispered.  
“Oh meine Nikolaus, miene liebling.”

He pulled back startled, and when he met her eyes, he found himself staring into a mirror image of his own. It was only now as an adult that he could see himself reflected in her and he realized who she was, and why she had stayed.

“Mutter?” He asked, voice hoarse with emotion.

She took his face in her hands and smiled through her tears, nodding. It was his turn to hug her, and he did desperately as if she would disappear when he let go.

“I’m sorry, I am so sorry” He gasped into her shoulder not sure what he was apologizing for, her dying, not knowing her, or the last years of not seeing her. 

He felt her hand in his hair, stroking the way he could only imagine before and she replied. “Es gibt nichts zu vergeben, meine liebling” (There is nothing to forgive, my darling)

They sat down on his bed, her cradling him to her. He fell asleep that way, listening to her sing a lullaby the same way he had all those times over the years, this time, for the first time ever, in the arms of his mother.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, I am not even sure where this came from, I was supposed to be finishing my Nanowrimo fic and this happened . I used google translate for the German, so if anyone wants to correct that, please send me the corrected version. I hope you enjoy it half as much I did writing it.


End file.
